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A Rock Moves In Space
theBrownfury writes: "The BBC is reporting here that
a very large Earth collision course asteroid has been discovered. This asteroid, NT7,
was first observed on July 5th and current data suggests an impact date of
February 1st, 2019. NT7 is 2kms wide and on date of impact will be approaching
Earth at 28km/s. An asteroid of this size is large enough to cause continent
wide destruction. However astronomers are still cautious in reporting this
asteroid as the orbit of NT7 has not been fully verified. Current data on
NT7's orbit suggests it orbits the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted
orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit." The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!
"You have 19 years to do something about a 2km rock headed for Washington. Go!"
Nothing like a crisis to focus the mind, eh?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Mother nature is a terrorist! First the thunderstorms and now the asteroids! What's next? Exploding stars? scary stuff
Got friends?
Well, if Win2k was NT5, and WinXP is NT6, then I suppose it's due time that the next generation NT7 makes it's "impact" on the world.
We need to hurry up and send a team of foul-mouthed perverted semi-illiterate oil miners into space! And for the love of all that's holy, somebody start having sex with Liv Tyler!
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Those aliens are running NT7 already!
Leave it to British tabloits to sensationalize a non-story. Fortunately I never see biased or inacurate stories at this site.
Check out the 3d view here.
Just fast-forward to Feb-1 2019, set the center on earth, and zoom in.
The most important words in the article (well maybe they weren't actually there, but I paraphrase): More data needed. There is still a huge margin of error in the calculation of the asteroid's orbit. It just might hit Earth at this point.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
-f
www.blackant.net
It keeps getting worse and worse. NT5 had an estimated 65000 bugs, if I recall correctly, but at a few grams per bug (when they don't fly), nobody cared about such a tiny mass. But now NT7 would be large enough for continental scale devastation? Wow. That must be a serious number of bugs.
On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards.
You think you know about programming?
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
2002 NT7 Impact Risk
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
I told my cow orkers not to worry about the unix signed 32-bit int date problem! Ha-hahahaha, I love being right! Oh, wait a minute...
This dangerous situation only get's harder to deride the longer we wait. I am doing everything I can to influence NASA to start working on getting a nuclear blast to deride the course of the oncoming danger. I agree that detonating a nuclear bomb in the course of the approaching llama is a bit drastic, but I refuse to sit idly by as the approaching threat of llama collision approaches.
I guess in about 17 years it'll be time to ask that girl if she'll sleep with me if the world was about to end
;-)
and won't *you* feel like shit if she still says no?
Asteroid NT7: it really whips the llama's ass!
Apparently it's too late... Check out this news flash.
Note the picture. The asteroid in the story is a couple km wide, the one depicted was hundreds of km (big enough to discorporate this seemingly solid little planet of ours for a while). Also note that it is hitting right in the U.S. I think that the artist has some issues with Uncle Sam...
In short, definitely unwarranted.
BlackGriffen
1. mine it for data;
...and, well, you get the point. If it's coming close enough, let's turn it in to something useful.
2. use it as a platform for whatever;
3. sell pieces of it to whomever;
4. mine it for whatever minerals it may carry;
5.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
probably, but hey... like the old saying goes...
you can't make somebody love you
you can only stalk them and hope they panic and ive in...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
And Linux may be on version 3.0 if we are lucky. Mozilla may be to version 2.
Most of you only have 16 years to lose your virginity!
Heh teasin =)
Bush declares war on A Rock!
sulli
RTFJ.
We may never see Mozilla 2.0. :(
"Derp de derp."
It was first seen on the night of 5 July, picked up by the Linear Observatory's automated sky survey programme in New Mexico, in the southern US.
I work at Lincoln labs and acutally know the people running the LINEAR project (they are so proud that they are the best in the world, let me tell you). But for the rest of you, here is their website.
They find more than half of the new NEO (Near earth orbit) asteroids each year that are found. They have a telescope down in New Mexico and have the largest CCD (2560x1960 res) in the market. That's the thing that takes a digital image of the sky and compares it to past images to see if any "stars" have moved...i.e asteroid. The higher resolution you can get, the further out you can see. From their webpage, you can see they have found at least 951 NEO's. So there are a LOT of asteroids comming near us. But in space, near is still very far away. So unpack those bunkers and return to Real Life, we're still safe for a while. Also, the rate of finding new NEO's is decreasing, so that means that we've (humans) found most of the asteroids that can endanger us.
(most of that was taken from this post of mine from a while ago)
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/doc/palermo.html
That should help a tiny bit
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
The higher-precision text-based orbital calculator is more accurate. (And overloaded right now.) It has 2002 NT7 in its database. Both claim January 28, 2019 is the date of closest approach. Both claim closest approach around 0.8 AU. Remember, this is projecting many orbits ahead, and small-object orbit projection is inherently noisy because minor disturbing forces matter.
Either we'll know it's a definite miss in a few weeks, or this will be a worry for some time to come.
Don't worry everyone. I spent most of my youth in the local arcade preparing for just such an event!
Everything will be taken away from you.
A Palermo value of 0.06 means that the risk from this object is elevated above the background risk for such objects by about 15%. (The 0.06 is the log of the ratio of the risk to the background risk.) So however worried you were yesterday about collisions with 2 km asteroids, you can be 15% more worried today.
In short, not worth losing sleep over.
Be realistic. Even those who insist on calling the US names all the time generally wouldn't accuse us of being inactive. Should this happen, I would be willing to bet that the US would foot quite a bit more than their share of the bill (calculated either way that you gave above), and take charge of the operation to make sure it's completed. And when it was over, the US would say, "Yout guys all owe us one." After which everyone would go back to hating us.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/close.html
give distances both in AU and LD (lunar distances) for the dozen or so close passes that happen each month or so.
Not that you should be alarmed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In case you're wondering what this means (and I was):
The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale was developed to enable NEO specialists to categorize and prioritize potential impact risks spanning a wide range of impact dates, energies and probabilities. Actual scale values less than -2 reflect events for which there are no likely consequences, while Palermo Scale values between -2 and 0 indicate situations that merit careful monitoring. Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.
The scale compares the likelihood of the detected potential impact with the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact. This average risk from random impacts is known as the background risk. For convenience the scale is logarithmic, so, for examples, a Palermo Scale value of -2 indicates that the detected potential impact event is only 1% as likely as a random background event occurring in the intervening years, a value of zero indicates that the single event is just as threatening as the background hazard, and a value of +2 indicates an event that is 100 times more likely than a background impact by an object at least as large before the date of the potential impact in question.
Taken from NASA: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/doc/palermo.html
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
So, the palermo value of 0.06 (p is just greater than one) means we are very, very slightly more likely to get hit by NT7 than we are to get hit by another astreroid of equal or greater size before 2019.
You may be joking but there is some truth to what you say, I think we may need something like this to open our eyes a little. A lot of evidence points to asteroid impact likely being the biggest actual threat to mankind, but despite this far to many short sighted politicians wont give it a second thought! Specifically I'm talking about the Australian govt who a while back cut all funds to asteroid search programs, virtually leaving the entire southern hemisphere unchecked for such potential threats.
Hope you don't feel too safe with the fact that NASA and many European astronomers are searching the skies daily for these threats... Someone's letting us down.
(nb yep im an aussie..)
Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, that's just the problem with our outdated patent system. Not enough incentive for developing killer astroid deflection systems. Before you get the chance to make your royalties, you find out the end of the world is just past your expiration date and those damn generic solutions and open source hackers are already waiting in the wings to save humankind for basement bargin prices. If you want to make any money at all you've pretty well gotta tie up your application for as long as possible and then slap injunctions on all the would-be good samaritan heroes with some killer submarine claims. We can only hope that they'll increase the term for anti-apocalyptic devices - otherwise I just can't think of any incentive to innovate.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Don't worry about the alarmist graphic. You'll note that they BBC online site uses that "giant asteroid destroying the Earth" image every second on third asteroid story they run. Here's a few recent favorites with the scary image:
Asteroid Impact Centre Site Selected
Earth at Lower Risk of Impact
UK Centre to Study Asteroid Threat
So, yeah, basically you should ignore that image. It's not related to the story in any but the most basic level; it's a picture of an asteroid hitting the Earth... a stock one.
--
RumorsDaily
After a brief press conference today, president George W. Bush was seriously mauled, when he declared war on The Rock, actor/wrestler Dwayne Johnson, which resulted in a surprise drop kick attack followed by a head butt and a pile driver by the professional wrestler, before White House Spokesperson Ari Fleisher managed to stop laughing out loud and informing the press and Dwayne Johnson that the President meant " a rock" and not "" The Rock". President Bush was rushed to the local hospital where doctors feared severe brain damage, but concluded that "there was nothing there to begin with, so it couldn't be hurt anyhow".
The President later appologised for his mistake blaming it on terrorists who had sabotaged his statement.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
You mean slashdot-like moderators can save us from asteroids just by modding the rock down?
I'm impressed!
Better a rock than me.
Table-ized A.I.
Regarding the title, "A rock moves in space".
Moving in space is relative. Relative to the earth, *every* rock in space is moving (unless maybe there is something in those Lagrange points, or whatever you call them.)
Further, the solar system is orbiting around the galactic center, and the galaxy (Milky Way) is moving toward the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
Personally, I don't want to go the the Virgo Cluster. Too many galaxies there to bump into and trigger nasty big-star supernovas in the process. But I have no choice in the matter.
Damned gravity.
Table-ized A.I.
2002-NT7 was discovered 9-Jul-2002
There have been 102 observations (as of 8 hour ago) up thru 22-Jul-2002
Radar images show that the object is between 2 and 2.1km in size. The mass is about 1.1e13 Kg. This is somewhat light for an asteroid of this size. This suggests that it may belong to the "pile of compressed rock" set as opposed the more solid "iron chunk" types.
Impact speed is high, about 28.5 km/s. This speed is due to the nearly "head on" approaches for most of the close approaches.
There is too little data and some of the observations may suffer from systematic errors. So over the next week or two the odds of impacting will change.
Currently the odds of being hit by 2002-NT7 is about 1 in 100,000. The problem comes from how Earth deflects it during some of its close-by approaches.
The orbit of 2002-NT7 takes about 837 days. The path takes out as far as Mars and just inside Earth's orbit.
Close approach dates are:
The odds, given the current limited observations, of impacting us 2019 thru 2051 are slim. The real problems show up in the 2060 and every 7 years after that. Small changes due to the close passes in 2019 thru 2051 make it hard to pin down later on.
If this rock hits the earth then our way of life as we know it would surely end. Such an impact would be on par (but somewhat less) with the impact that ended the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
It is not known where on earth it might impact. Too early to tell. Not that is matters for a rock of this size ... anyway on early
will suffer sooner or slightly later.
Looking at the raw data: when one tosses out one set data (all from the same source) that seems to have a systematic error: then things get worse. That is, the limited data minus this one source suggests that the odds of being impacted on or after 2060 are much more likely. But again, more independent observations are needed before one can say all this with more certainty.
IMHO: 2002-NT7 does not have much of a chance to hit us before 2060. From 2060 on, things get really ugly.
Stay tuned ...
chongo (was here)
I don't know which is more scary -- the idea of an asteroid hitting the Earth, or the name "NT7".
The KT event asteroid that hit 65 million years and formed the Chicxulub crater ago was almost certainly larger. Estimates of that impactor have ranged from 4km to 18km in diameter with more recent evidence suggesting that the smaller size estimates may be more accurate. Others prefer the larger sizes. Even if they are correct and the KT-impactor was on the larger end of the scale, an impact of a 2km asteroid is no trivial matter.
Assuming the same density, the ~2km 2002-NT7 has about 1/8th the mass of KT impactor. Perhaps 1/10th the mass if 2002-NT7 turns out to be a lower than average density asteroid.
When I said:
I should have said:
I want to repeat that the chance of impact prior to 2060, based on the current limited set of observations, is slim (1 in ~100,000 more).
The chance of an 2002-NT7 impact after 2060 is uncertain. It is hard to estimate the location of 2002-NT7 on/after 2060 in part because of the 4 prior close approaches and in part because positions become more uncertain as time goes on.
It is common to consider asteroid positions 100 years or more in the future to uncertain enough as to not be useful to estimate impact risk. This 100 year uncertainty limit gets shorter when one throws in 1 or more close approaches.
While 2002-NT7's orbit position will become better defined with additional data, the risk assessment of the 2060 pass (and beyond) will remain more uncertain for some time. Time (and more accurate observations) will tell how much the next generations will have to worry or not about 2002-NT7.
IMHO, there is nil chance of an impact by 2002-NT7 before 2060. The trend / perturbations on 2002-NT7 suggest that things could get ugly later on. Monitoring of 2002-NT7 over time, plus improved orbit models will tell how much future generations will need to worry about an impact >= 2060.
chongo (was here)
check it out here
look at the "blast" heading -- this is mostly what we are concerned with. (i linked to a higher level of the hiarchy in case anyone is interested in the other effects as well.
anyway... you can see from the data that on earth, one megaton bomb can devastate a radious of ~3km -- which is already larger than the asteroid... but i digress, and will try to look at this systematically
1) delivery of the weapon
this is probabbly the most no-brainer of the whole deal. all current ICBMs go into sub-orbit already anyway, strapping a few boosters onto them for escape velocity should not be a big problem.
it is useful to note that the asteroid will be a threat even if no impact occurs on 2019; in fact it would be a much larger threat down the line. however, the frequent encounters with it in the near future gives up plenty of time to approach it and take action.
2) effective-ness of the weapon
this is somewhat harder to determine. see -- the problem is that all of our data on nuclear weapons is earth-based; i.e in a atmospheric environment. -- the 3km effective radius is based on this fact as well -- the destruction is not from the blast of the weapon -- but instead the sudden compressiong / decompression of the atmosphere that transmit the detonation energy to do the destruction. if the asteroid is indeed loosely packet -- much of the energy will just escape; while if the asteroid is solid-packet -- the bomb may not be powerful enough to break it all the way apart.
before we go further -- it is very obvious that the bomb(s) need to be deeply implanted inside the asteroid for maximum effective-ness.
the best scenario to hope for is that the asteroid have a large ice content. the vaporization of the ice would then be the medium of energy transfer -- breaking apart the asteroids into chunks that the earth's atmosphere can handle - which is probabbly the best we can hope for.
similar things can happen with solidified CO2 / methane / whatever. but we won't know about the asteroid's contents until later (more observations).
the good news is that if the asteroid was ever broken apart -- the gravitational force between the pieces should be small enough that they won't meaningfully get back together.
3) possible hiccups
the fact is that simply not enough is known about the behavior of nuclear weapons in vacuum -- which is both very cold, and lack the aforementioned energy transfer medium. so it may be that the weapon is actually quite in-effective in space. furthermore, depending on nuclear bombs to vaporize a whole asteroid is only a dream -- nuclear weapons destroy via shockwaves, and the thermal energy is actually comparatively low for what we need to accomplish.
this basically lead to the fact that if we press the red button, the bomb goes off, and nothing happens to the asteroid except a shockwave rings through its structure but it remains intact.
moreover -- drilling 1km down on an asteroid in as un-proven technology at best -- so there may be tons of problems there.
4) some alternatives
besides straight-up disintergration of the asteroid, there can be other things to try, for example, if you insert bombs in a planar fashion - it *may* be possible to break the asteroid into two or more chunks -- and if it is properly calculated -- it should be possible to get the thing either crash into mars, or get into earth orbit. (on a side note -- this would be very cool -- space elevator baby) and the smaller chunk can be much more easily broken down by nuclear means. (this is assuming the asteroid is a fairly rigid body of iron, etc etc.
i had some other points -- but since this *might* be the end of the world after all -- i am going to go out and try to get laid now.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Remember all that fuss and bother about Y2K? Remember the Unix crowd talking about having a similar problem in 2038 when the epoch rolls over?
Suddenly it doesn't seem like much of a problem anymore, does it?
Someone you trust is one of us.
December 1, 2017
Reuters
Today in the 17th year of the anti-terror extended presidency, Bush urged everyone on Earth to pray to Jesus to stop the asteroid. He blamed democrats for stopping all efforts to divert destruction but said he had faith everything would be "hunky-dorey."
A summery of the anti-asteroid efforts are as follows:
2002: Republicans reject idea that asteroids exist.
2004: A bill funding more science is rejected as "pork barrel".
2006: Republicans reject theorey asteroids have ever hit Earth in it's 4000 year history, and therefore never will.
2008: Republicans admit asteroids may exist, but if one did hit the Earth it wouldn't be that bad.
2010: Despite mounting evidence that the asteroid will have a direct hit, Bush rejects the science as "shakey and controversial."
2012: UN resolution on asteroid vetoed by US as being too intrusive.
2014: Senate plan to stop asteroid rejected by Bush as "too costly." Tax cut for rich is passed.
2016: Emperor Bush rejects an internation coalition to stop the asteroid as "flawed."
You are asking a good question. The reason why the close approaches occur on the same day of the year is because 2002-NT7's orbit is closest to Earth's orbit at one point. That point does shift around. The current model suggests the closest approach occurs at:
The path of 2002-NT7 will next cross earth's orbit plane going upward at a point about 132.1708757 degrees from the Fall Equinox. Now 132.1708757 degrees / 360 degrees = 0.3671413214 of a circle. Using 365.2564 days (Earth's year), 0.3671413214 of a circle * 365.2564 days = about 134.1 days from the Fall Equinox. 134.1 days from Sep 23 (~06 hr UTC) lands one near 1 Feb.
Take a look at this 2002-NT7 orbit diagram. The dark blue part of 2002-NT7's orbit is below Earth's plane. The light blue part is above Earth's plane. The yellow line from the Sun (red dot in center) going down and to the right is the 0 degree fall equinox line. The vertical yellow line, 132.1708757 degrees from the equinox line (as measured in the plane of Earth's orbit, not the plane shown on your screen) shows where 2002-NT7 crosses Earth's orbit plane. That crossing spot (the place where the dark/light parts of 2002-NT7's orbit meet near the yellow line), you will notice, is very close to Earth's orbit. That spot is the place where Earth is found on/near Feb 1. No other place on Earth's or 2002-NT7's orbit comes as close.
You ask another good question about deflection:
Not every object that gets within 35000km of Earth enters a geostationary orbit. The reason why 2002-NT7 is not captured by earth is that it is moving about 26.25 km/second as it crosses Earth's orbit plane. It is moving too fast to be captured by Earth and pulled into a orbit around our planet.
FYI: An object orbiting the Earth once a day 35,000 km above the surface is moving about 3 km/second with respect to the center of the Earth. The 26.25 km/second speed of 2002-NT7 is much faster.
BTW: Earth DOES deflect 2002-NT7. The crossing point and angle in inclination do shift a but after a close approach, but not by a huge amount. These close passes make the 2002-NT7 orbit tricky to model.
On a different question that somebody else asked:
Your typical astro/solar system display program that runs on your PC (XEphem, RedShift, TheSky, or even that Java app on the JPL site) uses simplified assumptions that are OK for general approximation of objects that do not have significant encounters. They frequently use point size masses and only take into account the Grav pull of the Sun and major planets. High precision models must use much much much more complex models. For example, in addition to accurate 2002-NT7 observations (to measure its position) one must use a non-point Earth model. That gravity lump called EurAsia has a slightly different "tug" than the Pacific Ocean, for example. Normally that difference is not critical, but when one is trying to predict with high precision year in the future, such details can become important.
Permit me to end with a note about critical NASA mission called GRACE.
There is a very critical mission (largely ignored by the general press) known called GRACE. GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The mission will obtain obtain accurate global and high-resolution determination of both the static and the time-variable components of the Earth's gravity field. This goal will be achieved by making accurate measurements of the inter-satellite range change to within one micron between two co-planar, low altitude polar orbiting satellites, using a microwave tracking system.
GRACE will provide us with an accurate Gravity map which will improve the modeling of very close approaches. I am looking forward to the day with GRACE's gravity maps can be used to establish more detailed close approach orbit models. I wish the GRACE team all the best!
IAACM (I Am A Celestial Mechanic) :-)
and I hope this helps.
chongo (was here)
If you have been following the recent articles about the "Interplanetary Superhighway" discovered by NASA researcher Martin Lo (I have been scouring the net for papers recently) you will realize that there may be a good case for early deflection. In fact NASA re-released the story about this with a little more data just this morning (jpl mailing list). This is hot stuff!
Lo is trying to map the low energy trajectories through the Solar System which result from calculating n-body gravitational problems for all the objects in the System. Apparently there are tube-like trails between the Sun and the Oort Belt along which objects can travel theoretically without thrust, and the dinosaur killer is thought to have come down an "offramp" to the Earth much like Shoemaker-Levy apparently did with Jupiter.
This technology was used in the Genesis Mission and chaos theory applies to the low-energy halo orbit around a Sun-Earth libration point. After orbitting around this point a few times the robot will (without thrust) return to a sample capture point in Earth orbit.
While I do not yet understand the math itself, it seems likely that this Rock is in a somewhat chaotic orbit and that small nudges can have very large effects on its trajectory down the way. A decade or two may not be long enough, or we might even set up a pattern which will smash us on a later orbit, but the technology is being developed right now.
So far, no pre-discovery images of 2002-NT7 have been found. A search of pre-discovery images is on-going.
I will post new updates to chongo's journal over the next few weeks. Please check my journal for the latest 2002-NT7 orbit model information.
chongo (was here)
Lots of civilization ending threats face us. Race ending threats face us. Life on Earth ending threats face us. For most of them the odds are basically impossible to calculate. Will we end civilization? Render the human race extinct? Render the Earth unfit for anything but the most primitve life through poisoning the Earth with our waste? It is incalculable, because it depends on making a subjective judgement of whether we can learn to be wise, instead of clever. We are clever enough to build things that could kill us as a side-effect. Are we wise enough not to? That is incalculable.
Astronomical disasters are ones about which we can make reasonable, defensible judgements, and start to enter into actuarial calculations.
Yes, a close enough Supernova burst could destroy civilization. Slashdot has discussed this recently, and again here. 160 to 200 light years was suggested to be the distance beyond which civilization would be safe from a supernova. NASA's picture of the day site has half a dozen articles about eta carinae, a large variable star that they state is a good candidate for the next supernova in our neck of the woods. It is well beyond that 200 ly limit.